The present invention relates to a system and method for cooling electronic circuit devices such as large scale integration chips (LSICs) and, more particularly, to a cooling system and method for electronic circuit devices which are well suited for maintainin the temperatures of a large number of such devices to be tested in a highly accurate temperature range and stably cooling the devices at all times.
Known cooling systems of this type as shown in Japanese Patent Publication No. A-61-247061 are such that air is directly blown against the surface of electronic circuit devices by a fan or the like to suppress any increase in the temperature of the devices due to their heat generation. In recent years, however, there has been the advancement in the field of electronic circuit devices, particularly semiconductor integrated circuits, etc., toward increasing the degree of integration and the level of power dissipation, and thus it has become impossible to fully cool such devices. As a result, the use of low temperature air in place of the room temperature air has been proposed. However, the production of low temperature air not only requires large-scale equipment but also causes moisture condensation in the system, thus creating a concern over deterioration of the electric insulation, etc.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 56-31743 has proposed a method in which in order to enhance the cooling properties, the cooling of an LSI (large scale integration) chip is effected by pressing against it a cooling plate which is cooled by water or the like.
If this conventional technique is used in the air, even if the contacting surfaces of the cooling plate and an electronic circuit device have been finished with a high degree of accuracy to reduce the surface roughness and warpage to less than several .mu.m, the thermal resistance between the contacting surfaces is still high due to the fact that the thermal conductivity of air is low and it is impossible to increase the contact surface load. Also, any slight change in the surface roughness or warpage causes the contact thermal resistance to vary considerably. As a result, it is difficult to cool a device to be subjected to the evaluation of characteristics or the screening while maintaining its temperature with a high degree of accuracy. Still further, the surface of the cooling plate will be damaged when a large number of devices are tested successively. Thus, the above-mentioned method is also disadvantageous from the standpoint of always cooling the devices stably.